Prologue
Eighteen Years Previous
Skye was only a child the first time she watched them put a traitor on trial. She saw them take the man’s hands. Saw the blood run swift and dark over the stone altar as the soldier wiped his blade clean, like a storm sweeping over a sapphire sea.
Skye remembers the way the severed hands twitched like crushed spiders dying on their backs, thin legs curling inward. Remembers the way the enemy stared at the stumps of his arms as the blood ran down to his elbows.
Remembers how he screamed.
That was a lifetime ago. Tonight, they’ll put another traitor on trial. Skye is waiting in her cell. Because it won’t be an enemy’s hands they take this time—it will be Skye’s hands. And she has only herself to blame.
Be a good girl. Keep your head down. Remember your place.
These were the words she lived by once. The lessons instilled in her since birth.
That was before she met Crow. A boy from the shadows undid all her lessons. He undid everything.
Crow. Like a swallowed thorn, the name stings her lips and tongue and throat.
How could she be so naïve?
Skye will tell you how. She will weave you a tapestry while there’s still time. It will be her last weaving. Because once the moon rises and they come for her, Skye will weave no more.
You can’t weave without hands.
One
Eris had never met a lock she couldn’t pick.
Lifting the oil lamp, she peered into the keyhole, her wheat-gold hair hidden beneath a stolen morion. Its steel brim kept slipping forward, impeding her vision, and Eris had to shove it back in order to see what she was doing.
The wards inside the lock were old, and from the look of them, made by a locksmith who had cut all possible corners. Any other night, Eris would have craved the challenge of a more complicated lock. Tonight, though, she thanked the stars. Any heartbeat now, a soldat would round the corner. When they did, Eris needed to be on the other side of this door.
The lock clicked open. Eris didn’t let out her breath. Just slid her pin back into her hair, rose to her feet, and wrapped her slender fingers around the brass knob, turning slowly so as not to make a sound.
She glanced back over her shoulder. The hall lay empty. So Eris pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Holding up the lamp, its orange glow alighted on a simple desk made of dark, scuffed wood. An inkwell, a stack of white parchment, and a knife for breaking wax seals were neatly arranged on top.
Eris shut the door gently behind her. Her gaze lifted from the desk to the object hanging on the wall: a tapestry woven of blue and purple threads. The very thing she’d come for.
Eris knew this tapestry by heart. It depicted a faceless woman sitting at her loom. In one hand, she held a silver knife curved like the moon. In the other, she held a spindle. And on her head sat a crown of stars.
Skyweaver.
The god of souls.
But it wasn’t just the image that was familiar. It was the threads themselves—the particular shade of blue. The thickness of the wool and how tightly it was spun. The signature way it was woven.
The moment Eris glimpsed it from the hall two days ago, she nearly stumbled. Every morning for years, this tapestry stared down at her from stone walls flanked on either side by the sacred looms of the scrin—a temple devoted to the Skyweaver.
What was it doing here, in the dragon king’s palace, all the way across the sea?
Someone must have stolen it, she thought.
So Eris decided to steal it back.
She had some time, after all. Her captain—a heartless man named Jemsin—was currently meeting with the empress of the Star Isles. It was why he sent Eris here, to steal a jewel from the dragon king’s treasury. Not because he needed the money. No. He needed Eris out of sight while the empress and her Hounds came aboard his ship—for his sake as much as hers. If it was ever found out that Jemsin harbored the very criminal the empress had been hunting these seven long years, it would mean death for both Eris and her captain.
But Eris had already stolen the king’s jewel. And she still had a day before needing to report to Jemsin’s protégé. She had some time to waste.
So here she was, wasting it.
Eris pushed herself away from the closed door and set the oil lamp down on the dark wood of the desk. The moment her gaze lifted to Skyweaver, there was that sharp shock she’d felt two days ago. Memories of warmth, friendship, and belonging flooded her . . . quickly followed by feelings of terror, grief, and betrayal.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I’m not doing this for you,” she told the god as she reached to untie the tapestry from where it hung on the wall. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a traitor and a fraud.” She kept her voice low, knowing the security had been doubled since the king’s jewel went missing two nights ago. “I’m doing this for the ones you betrayed.”
Eris no longer believed in Skyweaver, god of souls. But the one who’d woven this tapestry believed in her—and he’d died for that belief. So, lifting it down from the wall, Eris rolled it up tight, then tucked it carefully under her arm. As she did, she plucked the gray, spiny scarp thistle from the pocket of her stolen uniform. Careful not to prick herself on its thorns—which were poisonous—she set it down on the desk.
In some ways, the signature was more for Eris than the ones she stole from. A way of proving to herself that she did, in fact, exist. She might live an invisible life, but she was still here. Still alive.
The scarp thistle was proof.
With the tapestry still under her arm, and her signature there on the commandant’s desk, Eris reached for her spindle. It was time to go. She would take this tapestry and put it with the rest of her loot. Then she’d head for the Sea Mistress and wait for her summons.
But before she could pull the spindle free of its pouch, a voice behind her broke the quiet.
“Who let you in here?”
The voice was low and gruff and it made Eris freeze—except for her right hand. Her fingers tightened around the smooth, worn wood of her spindle, slowly drawing it out.
“I asked a simple question, soldier.”
Soldier.
Eris had forgotten she was in disguise tonight. With the heightened security, it was easier moving through the palace dressed like a guard.
So Eris turned. A soldat stood in the doorway. He hadn’t quite stepped into the room, clearly startled by the sight of her, but he wore the same uniform she did: a steel morion on his head and the dragon king’s crest across his shirt. The only difference was that a saber hung from his hip, while a woven pouch hung from hers.
Eris hated soldiers.
“I was sent to remove this ratty old thing,” she lied, nodding her chin toward the tapestry of the god of souls, rolled up beneath her arm. She winked as she said, “Apparently our commandant isn’t exactly the pious type.”
Her wink had the desired effect. The soldat relaxed. He smiled then, leaning against the door, seemingly about to remark on the commandant’s piety or lack thereof, when something on the desk caught his eye.
Eris watched his face go blank, then light up with recognition. Looking where he looked, she silently cursed herself.
The scarp thistle.
“You . . . you’re the Death Dancer.”
He didn’t wait for her to confirm it. Just drew his weapon.